Saturday, 21 April 2012

So there was a time not so long ago when fashion dictated that a pair of jeans was not a jeans if it was not cut at some point, frayed was cool, faded was cool.

Therefore in case I have confused this with too much coolness in the face of a price tag. So in simple terms the jeans were deliberately cut for fashion before purchase and perhaps even to increase the purchase price.

So nowadays, times have changed, rather quickly for my slow-go middle aged mentality.

My boy through genuine wear and tear has a tear in a rather good fitting pair of jeans at the groin area. Ventilation is cool. Apparently not.

Apparently this means that I must get the credit card from its cob-webbed safe place of keeping, to pay rather ridiculous prices for branded goods. He thinks.

In my day and age a slice in the trousers was a reason for Mam to do a rather fetching patch and it was damn cool. And cheaper than buying a pair of non-branded jeans let alone a pair of branded jeans. By darn, we darned socks or at least Mam did.

I am holding firm that a patch is the best economic answer. A patch obviously not cutting it, to coin a phrase, in teenage cool that is to say his jeans in not going to be part of any family austerity programme.

My boy is about to enter a tantrum that I used to call a pout, but as an adult-in-waiting he sees this quivering of the recently-acquired-bass voice as a demonstration of manhood.

Its time for my "in my day and age" speech, a speech that will always be as welcomed as much as say a mobile phone in the Monastery vowed to Silence.

I pontificate with the threat of my non -use of a credit card, he knows I will eventually concede, I know he knows, he knows I know, the father-son bonding knows. There is a depth of knowledge known but not voiced, and in that void he will suffer the boredom of my voice on how things wer, how it should be, how it was for my father and how it was for his father before him and my great grandfather down t'pit. How the younger generation ~ him~ do not appreciate things like we ~the older generation~ do.

He is prepared to suffer a little, there is the balance now of when to perhaps hint at conceding.

By all things going nuclear- atoms are split - suffering is over.

Arbitration is needed, call in the Peacemakers, t..t...timing is everything. He is not prepared to suffer for his jeans.

I am prepared to wait to be appreciated for my wisdom, even if wisdom is symbolised in pocket-sized plastic and let Father-Son bonding be in need of some glue.

One day my son you too will make this speech to my grandson and equally forget that you wanted a brand new pair of jeans for the moral of this story is..... money does not grow on trees.

Wednesday, 11 April 2012

Perhaps I should start by saying with age my driving has improved as I realised getting from A to B did not require GTE to be stapled to the backside of a car and "go faster" stripes may result in "go slower" scratches.

So GPS is a wonderful thing that has saved me from reading a map for many a year now, or made me as lazy as tub of lard to bother to plan a road trip. I have found the most ridiculous location known to any in-sensible housing planner, courtesy of the GPS.

GPS is a good thing, that is in general a good thing.

So I now drive in automatic in a manual car, as the GPS lady tells me, nay, orders me to 'Turn Right' in various metres and to 'Bear Right' even when I was unaware there was a verb "To bear". I understand her ~Miss GPS~ as if she was a trusted confidante. I am her servent to her all-knowing satellite view of all things called Traffic congestion avoidance.

So today, I am the designated driver because I am Dad, my teenagers sit there and look upon the chauffeur as a necessary evil, although sunglasses are worn and sunscreens may need to drawn down in case a friend sees them with the Oldie.

It is a sad day to see children so uncomfortable in comfortable passenger seats. I am the nearest that God could have created to a Teenage Anti-Christ figure, apparently.

So I am on the road, maxing out to the speed limit and watching the boy racers pass me by, although several drivers in brief glimpses looked middle aged.

So I am bearing right as she has ordained, when Miss GPS goes walkabout and "New Routes" me to nowhere. She is preparing clourful hexagons becoming stick insects to God knows where, but Dad knows, not where Dad wants to go. I want instruction.

Nightmare on Several Exit street is had.

Miss GPS is in a tiz, she is old like me, we are mutually befuddled. Our simbiotic relationship is breaking down, man-machine interface is reduced to "What the's". I am a senile old man talking to the GPS ~ a machine ~ in very negative way and she is no "Miss" anymore, unless we are talking about missing a road network.

So this is a new road network, or as I probably re-christened it as a *****!!!!-ing new road ****!!!ing network, or words to that effect. Panic and old age plays trouble with any memory that I may appear more teenager than the teenagers, especially in front of the teenagers. Full body adult tantrum is out there like starship in deep space.

Roundabouts appear like magic mushrooming from a real world but disapperaing from the virtual world of GPS. This is an AAAaaaargh moment.

So the kids are losing faith in my driving and next it will be religion, well there may be some hope there.

Brave driving decisons are being made, if my swearing is anything to go by. We survive, as I turn back to the "Boy Racer" years and instinct hunts down exits, as if they are an endangered species. I have a mission to save the road network equivalent of a Dodo, as in "do do" exit safely.

So finally as frayed teenage nerves are re-energised from their mild paralysis and the cerebal cortex re-adjusts to cricked vertebrae. Teenagers may be reconsidering their "No fear" slogan as a way of life. Fear comes whether you like it or not.

I am put in my "Grand Theft Auto" place as my teenager drily notes I believe "Drift Right" is not in the GPS vocabulary. Neither is "Make a hand-brake Turn if you dare" a software road rage inducing law of Highway coding.

Ho hum.... learning to drive lessons may be needed before I teach teenagers to learn to drive.

Friday, 6 April 2012

She arrives home late, later than an adult, later than the adult called Mam and Dad. The imagined dangers of the night were just imagined as entry to family home is made in a smile of a good night had and why are you still up, but whilst you're still up make me a tea kind of way.

Innocent fun has apparently been had. Laughs have been indulged, friends have been friends and who knows....enough history has been told and a bed awaits. Parents are left to imagine again, to fill in the gaps in most incredible ways, and wonder if it difficult to use a mobile phone after 11 o~clock, when you were damn good at using it, according to the bills for a good 4 hours in every other day. The bank account never lies.

We were there once hero-come-villains embarrassing a night away. Firsts are there to be taken on the road to adulthood. We were there, where excitement merges with youth, unique in its form, a youth fresh to the call of the Downtown Club and we kept our secrets too. Our parents were distant, left to imagine the cull of the night, where parents knew, from their years, sometimes out there lurkers lurk. This parenting malarkey is getting harder.